Seminole’s D29 needs change; it’s time for Tracey Kagan
In a 2008 endorsement for Scott Plakon, when he first ran for the state House, the Editorial Board wrote that he “approaches most issues with a free-marketer’s sensibility, but not in a knee-jerk manner.”
That’s no longer true in 2020, and it hasn’t been the case for some time. The Republican’s reflexive adherence to bright red politics no longer reflects west Seminole County’s increasingly purple views.
Seminole voters in District 29 will find a candidate closer to their more moderate politics in Democrat Tracey Kagan, who narrowly lost to Plakon two years ago.
Kagan, an attorney, is left of center, no doubt.
But her ideas and positions are geared more toward the forgotten service-class workers that the state Legislature, including Plakon, has barely lifted a finger to help, even as it rigged the economy against workers.
Kagan wants to expand Medicaid, which would help hundreds of thousands of Floridians get health insurance. Even Rick Scott saw the wisdom of that at one point while serving as governor.
Plakon does not, saying the state should instead take steps to reduce the cost of health-care. He’s right about reducing health costs, and the Legislature has made some wise moves in that direction.
But programs like direct care agreements between patients and doctors don’t eliminate the need for insurance to cover hospital stays, emergencies, specialists and many chronic and complicated illnesses.
You still need insurance to avoid financial ruin in a health crisis, and many Floridians still can’t afford it. Kagan gets that.
She and Plakon are in agreement that the state’s dismal unemployment system needs an overhaul. Florida’s miserly weekly benefits are too low, and the 12 weeks of benefits that the jobless got after the pandemic hit was criminally short, the worst in the nation.
The difference is that Plakon voted for the now infamous 2011 unemployment overhaul that was designed to make life even more miserable for out-of-work Floridians. Because of that bill, hundreds of thousands who lost their jobs because of the pandemic were eligible for just three months of state unemployment benefits. Plakon had a decade in the Legislature to do something about unemployment before the pandemic, but he didn’t.
What he did do was co-sponsor a bill in 2011 that made drug testing mandatory for adults who apply for public assistance under a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The bill passed, became law and was declared unconstitutional. It did, however, land Plakon on The Daily Show, where a reporter asked if Plakon wouldn’t mind providng a urine sample since he, too, was taking money from taxpayers.
Plakon is quick to tout his environmental bona fides, highlighting a half-dozen bills he voted in favor of the last few years to, among other things, promote clean water.
He’s cherry-picking issues that received virtually unanimous support in the Legislature. Plakon’s forgetting his 2011 vote to blow up Florida’s 25-year-old growth management law. He’s omitting his 2019 vote on a bill that finished the job by forcing anyone who dares challenge a local government’s growth management decision to pay everyone’s legal bills if they lose. And Plakon is leaving out his 2019 vote for three new toll roads through Florida’s rural heartland.
For two years running, Plakon’s gotten a zero on the Sierra Club’s legislative scorecard. One of the bills on Sierra’s scorecard this year was a measure that might have allowed developer Chris Dorworth to build a massive housing and business development in Seminole County’s protected rural area.
Plakon voted for that bill, later saying he didn’t understand the implications of it and writing Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto the bills, which DeSantis did. It’s good Plakon finally got on the right side of that issue, but it’s a bad look that he cast a yes vote in the first place.
He voted for the bill that undermined Amendment 4, which was supposed to restore voting rights to ex-felons. He’s consistently voted for bills that make it harder for citizens to change the state constitution. And he’s a certain yes vote whenever the state tries to stop local governments from governing, whether it’s about plastic straws, backyard gun ranges or even trimming trees.
Plakon points to his body of work on bills such as Donna’s Law, which gets rid of statutes of limitations on sex crimes against minors. That was a good bill, an excellent bill.
But a few bills like that don’t outweigh a long and consistent voting record weighted in favor of business interests and right-wing ideology.
In 2018 he voted for a bill that handed big business a half-billion in state tax refunds to the tiny fraction of companies that pay state corporate income taxes. In 2012 he sponsored a constitutional amendment that would allow state tax money to fund religious organizations. (It failed, getting just 44% of the vote.) In 2011 he introduced a bill designed to bust unions if they didn’t have enough membership, but exempting police and firefighter unions that typically support Republicans. His anti-union idea eventually made it into law in 2018, applying only to teachers unions that typically support Democrats. Plakon voted for it.
We’ve spent a lot of time on Plakon in this editorial because he’s spent a lot of time in the state Legislature. He has a record, and it’s not one we can support. On the whole, it’s dreadful.
Voters gave Plakon a chance. Multiple chances. It’s time to move on, and Kagan is waiting. The race has a third candidate — no-party affiliate candidate Juan Rodríguez — but this is a two-person race.
The best candidate in the contest is Tracey Kagan, whose candidacy gives west Seminole residents an alternative to the business-first, business-only mentality that has left so many of Florida’s workers in the dust.
Election endorsements are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board, which consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio, Jay Reddick, David Whitley and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Sentinel Columnist Scott Maxwell participates in interviews and deliberations. Send emails to insight@orlandosentinel.com.